Free A Child of Christian Blood: Murder and Conspiracy in Tsarist Russia: The Beilis Blood Libel by Edmund Levin

Andrei’s murder and could ignite a pogrom whenever he chose to. Second, he was to make sure the investigation appeared to be in competent hands: the bumbling Mishchuk had to be replaced by someone with an unassailable reputation. Liadov’s third imperative, however, was neither straightforward nor sensible. As he settled into his Kiev hotel suite, he mentally unpacked this part of his brief: to focus investigators on the “ritual version”—the notion that Andrei had been killed by Jews for his blood to makematzo for their Passover meals.
    Why was Liadov pursuing the very scenario that the government feared as incendiary? The government was, after all, determined to prevent anti-Jewish violence “at all costs.” If the abiding priority of the state was to preserve order, why would it pursue the most inflammatory possible course, one that would threaten its interests, both foreign and domestic?
    Liadov’s mission marks the start of this central mystery of the Yushchinsky affair.Russia, if measured by its skein of legal restrictions on Jews, was the most anti-Semitic country in the world, but this alone is not sufficient to explain how a medieval fantasy could engender a conspiracy at the highest levels of the tsar’s government. Was Liadov’s brief the result of some arcane political calculation? Possibly. But the answer may lie at a more atavistic level—within the warped mentality of a doomed regime and, ultimately, in the mind of the tsar himself. If there is one constant in the late period of imperial Russiandecadence, it was the urge of all officials to please the tsar, or those whose positions depended on the tsar’s favor. The tsar himself was notoriously inscrutable. In what remained an essentially absolute monarchy with profound rot at its core, much depended on what officials thought the tsar thought about a matter, or thought he would think about it if he took the time to think about it. Liadov and the rightists knew that the tsar planned an official visit to Kiev at the end of the summer, when the unsolved murder of a poorChristian boy promised to cast a shadow over his tour. Well aware that the proponents of the blood accusation would be hoping for a sign of imperial favor for their cause, Liadov had to recognize the signal importance of his mysterious but calculated mission.
    The day after his arrival in Kiev Liadov initiated his first delicate maneuver by summoning Golubev to his hotel suite for a meeting with him and the chief prosecutor,Chaplinsky. The young extremist was in a hostile mood. He refused to talk to Chaplinsky, whom he was meeting for the first time, regarding him as an enemy. Liadov told the young man that if he had anything to say, the prosecutor would listen. When Golubev insisted that “we”—that is, his band of thugs—“have an interest in preventing that horror,” meaning ritual murder, Liadov had his opening. He gave Golubev an uncompromising warning but presented thethreat in the most empathetic manner possible. Liadov later recounted the conversation as accurately as he could remember it.
    “I don’t think it would be in your interest to organize a pogrom,” he told Golubev.
    “Why?” Golubev replied.
    “Because,” Liadov said, “the Sovereign is expected to visit [Kiev]. If any of your fellow members cause a pogrom and there are disturbances in Kiev, then you’ll have as much chance of seeing the festivities as of seeing your own ears [as the Russian saying goes], and it probably would be more pleasant for you and your organization to see the Sovereign.”
    “That thought never occurred to me,” Golubev replied obligingly. “I promise you that there will be not be a pogrom.”
    Perhaps out of politeness, Golubev apparently did not mention that he had heard exactly the same line of coaxing from the KievGendarmes two weeks earlier. Liadov believed he had found the perfect psychological lever and reported to the justice minister, “The desire to avoid a